Former USC President Steven Sample speaks at an event earlier this year with the current USC Annenberg building serving as the backdrop. (Creative Commons)

The Annenberg Foundation announced Friday that it will commit $50 million to the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism for a new building, allowing the school to provide a more collaborative and technologically advanced environment for students.

The school will have to raise additional funds to complete the project but the Annenberg donation constitutes a powerful jump-start.

Since 2007, when Ernest J. Wilson III became dean of USC Annenberg, he and other school leaders have sought ways to fit 2,200 students and about two dozen research centers and student publications into its current, cramped 105,000-square-foot building on Watt Way. Next month will mark the building’s 34th anniversary.

USC will also announce Friday a separate $50 million donation for a cancer research center, reports the L.A. Times.

USC Annenberg houses both a journalism and a communications school. As the media world reshapes itself, and USC Annenberg has accelerated and expanded its innovation and its programs to meet the challenge, the issue of space has become an increasing problem.

“Students will benefit from more space, cutting-edge facilities and the fact that we can bring all of the Annenberg family together,” said Geneva Overholser, director of USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism.

Under Wilson's direction, the school began reimagining the space within the current building and drafting a vision for the future space on the southeast corner of the central Los Angeles campus near McClintock Avenue and West 34th Street  (see map). Part of the donation from the Annenberg Foundation will go toward building a state-of-the-art technological infrastructure at both buildings.

The new 82,000-square-foot facility that has yet to be designed will be built on space now occupied by USC Facilities Management Services. The new building will be erected near one of USC's busiest entrances and near the Jefferson Boulevard corridor, which itself is in store for a major redesign.

The foundation's gift will be formally announced Friday—the same day that C.L. Max Nikias is inaugurated as USC president. Nikias has served as provost at USC since 2005 until his appointment as president earlier this year.

The donation for a new building comes at a moment of both great turbulence and renaissance in the journalism world as manifested by the financial crisis hitting many newspapers and magazines and the concurrent rise of online content.

Wallis Annenberg—the longest-serving trustee of USC—is the chairwoman of the Annenberg Foundation, which established a $100 million endowment for the school eight years ago.

“As we move further into the 21st century, it is clear that the education of journalists will require a facility unlike any that now exists,” she said in a press release.

The Annenberg family has now donated a total of $350 million to USC, according to the L.A. Times, making them the university's biggest benefactors.

USC Annenberg introduced a special initiative earlier this year aimed at improving the entrepreneurial skills and business know-how of its students. A nationwide recession has placed greater emphasis on literacy in economics as well as familiarity with multimedia story-telling. Wilson believes the new facility will allow the school to continue to push its students successfully into the emerging media environment.

One idea already envisioned for the future building is a digital newsroom, housing all of Annenberg's student publications in one location.

“There's a ‘Wow’ factor with our current lobby with flat-screen televisions and couches, but you want even more than that,” said James Vasquez, the assistant dean of operations, facilities and technology at Annenberg. “You want everyone to see what our students are doing. All of these entities in one visible spot makes that happen.”

Wilson and school leaders had been debating whether to renovate the existing building, tear it down and completely rebuild it or simply move things around within the present design.

The school has spent $21 million during the past decade renovating its building. The construction of the new space will not end plans to modify the current facility.

“Now it becomes a broader issue about what's the connectivity between our buildings,” Vasquez said. “The decisions will be what stays here, what goes there.”

With a year of planning and two years of construction in store, USC Annenberg plans to open its new building in the fall of 2014.